Puig still feeling growing pains

April 14, 2014

Updated 9:27 p.m.

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Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig has had much to celebrate during his brief major league career, but has also drawn negative attention to himself with some of his actions on and off the field. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

Dodgers outfielder Yasiel Puig has had much to celebrate during his brief major league career, but has also drawn negative attention to himself with some of his actions on and off the field. MICHAEL GOULDING, STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER

LOS ANGELES – In his second big-league season now, Yasiel Puig must change the way he plays the game.

"No – why would he?” said veteran Dodgers first baseman Adrian Gonzalez, who often finds himself in the position of defending or mentoring the team’s unbridled bundle of raw athleticism and enthusiasm. “The people who are watching him every day would see who he really is. The people who think that (Puig needs to change) are getting one glimpse of one thing and all of a sudden make an opinion of him. That’s not good journalism or good writing.

“Let’s look at that. What are people seeing? They’re seeing him throw the ball as hard as he can because he wants to get a guy out. They’re seeing him running as hard as he can to second base because he wants to take that extra base. So what’s wrong with that? You saw the same thing from Bryce Harper when he came up and nobody said anything about that, certainly not to the same extent.”

OK, Puig doesn’t need to change a thing.

“It’s going to be an interesting year for Yasiel,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said this spring. “I think more than anything you want to see improvement. You want to see maturity from all your guys. For your young guys that come up – what adjustments is the league going to make to them? Are they going to make them back? Just hopefully see their maturity.

“The young, excited mistakes you see at times, you hope that’s a little more tempered with keeping the excitement about being in the big leagues. That’s kind of the joy of the young guys, seeing that excitement in the way they play and the energy. You’d like to keep that and maybe temper some of the young mistakes.”

The only thing that can be said with any certainty about Puig 114 games into his big-league career is that everyone seems certain about their opinion of him. Even Sandy Koufax wasn’t immune. When he spent a week in Dodgers’ camp this spring, the iconic left-hander was asked for his opinion not just of the pitching staff – but of Puig.

“It was crazy,” Koufax said, the Hall of Fame enigma trying to describe the new-age enigma of Puig-mania.

“I think the biggest thing is he hasn’t played with competition as good as he is. So you always have been able to have your physical ability make up for whatever else you did. He’s learning and I’m sure it’s going to happen. There’s too much talent for it not to.”

We are learning too. A newly published article in Los Angeles Magazine attempts to draw the curtain from Puig’s past, revealing the sordid – and dangerous – details of his escape from Cuba and journey to the major-league spotlight.

That spotlight has been both friend and enemy to Puig. Without it, he would not have found himself partying at the Playboy Mansion during last year’s All-Star break or rubbing elbows with LeBron James at the ESPY Awards. But he also wouldn’t have had the video of his December arrest for speeding splashed all over the Internet or been caught on tape by a tabloid website driving away from an L.A. nightclub the night after the Dodgers’ long return flight from Australia – three months after telling the Dodgers he had hired a driver and would not be driving anymore.

“He’s also done a lot in the community,” team president and CEO Stan Kasten said this spring, slipping into the organization’s default position with Puig – part enabler, part apologist for the team’s chief marketing asset. “And he took it upon himself because he himself has a real interest in developing his persona, according to the people he’s met with – a lot of the Laker people, he’s talked with Magic about the kind of person he can make himself into if he’s smart about it. That’s why he was more disappointed than anyone about the setback he had – and that’s really how he viewed the Florida episode, as a setback. He’s worked hard to get past it.”

As it always seems with Puig, “the Florida episode” was quickly replaced by new, fresh drama – baserunning mistakes in Australia, Mattingly’s passive-aggressive comments hinting at Puig’s diva tendencies, Puig’s late arrival and benching for the home opener, a team meeting called by Puig during which he asked his teammates for help in growing up. All of this less than a month into the season.

“Yasiel’s pretty much an open book. He’s pretty excited all the time,” Mattingly said this spring. “You guys (the media) have the last word, I think, as far as painting the picture. I think watching that evolution last year was pretty funny. It was like all of a sudden the media turned on him and then it turned on him everywhere. The fans changed quickly. First, it was they loved Yasiel everywhere. Then almost overnight they were on Yasiel.

“I thought he got painted wrong last year and misunderstood a bit. We just didn’t have any patience with him. I think you expected him to be, in a sense, Derek Jeter with the media when he was just a young 22-year-old coming into the country. I felt like he needed some slack. ... We all learn from it and move forward.”

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